Monday, April 29, 2013

"(I'm paraphrasing) Why would a country like the United States with relatively low unemployment and relatively low energy prices want to emulate a country like Spain which has an over 20% unemployment rate and skyrocketing energy costs?"............Now, to be fair here, Mr. Obama no longer seems to mention Spain (those leaked documents from the Spanish Socialist Workers Party in which even Mr. Zapatero himself admits that the green initiatives have failed and failed majorly - more so than even Caldaza has asserted - probably played a part in it) and, yes, for that I do give him some credit. SOME.

a) The climatic impact of each would be minimal (hell, even the protagonists of them admit it now) and b) the effect on the economy could potentially be ruinous (just take a look at what happened to Spain).............So, why are there still people out there advocating in favor of them? It would probably be best for me to just quote Maryland Senator, Ben Cardin, here, "Cap and Trade is most significant revenue generating proposal of our time."

Sunday, April 28, 2013

"Kyoto is exactly what I have been lobbying for. This agreement will be good for Enron stock. If implemented, this agreement will do more to promote Enron's business than will almost any other regulatory initiative. Enron now has excellent credentials with many green interests, including Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, etc.. This position should be increasingly cultivated and CAPITALIZED (my emphasis) on." John Palmisano in a memo to Enron director, Ken Lay. That sure as hell sounds like a symbiotic relationship to me.

According to Al Gore, record low temperatures and record slow fall are also a by-product of global warming (this in that it isn't just warming but extremes in climate and weather that are being produced). The only problem here is that Gore never once made these claims in either his book or his movie, and that he only started making them ex post facto. It seems to me that this is simply just another example of people trying to make the facts fit the theory and not vice versa.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

Alright, now I'm totally confused. Just take a look at these two quotes. 1) "The forcings that drive long-term climate change are not known with an accuracy sufficient to define future climate changes." And 2) "we argue that rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gasses such as chlorofluorocarbons, CH4, and N2O, NOT (my emphasis) by the products of fossil fuel burning." The first one is from 1998 and the second one from 2000. Any idea who might have uttered them, these quite reasonable sentiments? Try James Hansen!...Talk about a curve-ball, huh?

My only real question is - why did this Mann guy stop at 1,000 years? I mean, if the dude really wanted to underscore the evilness of human civilization/advancement, he could have just as easily taken his little hockey stick figure back 12-14,000 years. That way he could have eliminated not just the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warm Period, he could have also eliminated the Dark Ages Cooling, the Roman Warm Period, the Bronze Age Cooling, the Minoan Warm Period, the Akkadian Cooling, the Second Holocene Warming Optimum, the Egyptian Cooling, the First Holocene Warming Optimum, The Younger Dryas, the Allerod, the Older Dryas, and even the Bolling. The only thing that I can think of is that the fellow is either an ignoramus, or he totally thinks that we are. But, man, oh man, this guy really could have gone for the jugular had he wanted to (tongue planted firmly in cheek, obviously)..............................................................................................Seriously, though, I am not in any way, shape, or form trying to shit on the concept of sudden paradigm shifts. In fact, I'm pretty much on board with it as a general rule (Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, Watson and Crick, etc.). But I'm sorry, there was just something suspicious about this whole hockey stick thing right from the start; the manner in which the politicians rallied behind it, the woefully inadequate peer-review, the way that it coincided so perfectly with Kyoto, etc., etc.. And just this very concept of such brazen oversimplifying, the fact that these people focused strictly on one variable (man-made CO2) and disregarded the myriad of others (like, I don't know, the fact that we haven't had a major volcanic eruption with an VEI of over 4 in over 20 years). It just didn't seem like science at that point, and still.

I just got back from Newport and this time I did not, NOT, take a piss on the grounds of the Chateau sur Mer (yes, I almost did at the Chepstow but somehow was able to miraculously hold it back). Finally, I have a modicum of closure.

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

I'll take "Easily the Crappiest General Manager in the History of Organized Sports" for a thousand, Alex (needless to say, I've never forgiven him for shitting all over UConn during the 2011 Fiesta Bowl).

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

"Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future." Neils Bohr............."The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product." Eric Hoffer............."Do not allow yourself to be influenced by the sayings that something is obvious, whether a single man is saying so or whether it is a common opinion, for the desire for power leads men to shameful things, particularly in the case of divided opinions." Moses Maimonide............."Science is organized skepticism and the consensus must shift in the light of the evidence." Lord Martin Rees.

Monday, April 22, 2013

1) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/01/global-cooling-compilation/ - Great article by Anthony Watts in which he uncovers more than 60 newspaper and magazine articles from the 1970s warning us about the dangers of global cooling and the coming of yet another ice age.......And, yes, folks, some of the authors even seemed to think that the science was settled on it.............2) Of course the best part of this scenario is that a lot of the individuals who are currently trumpeting doomsday from warming were the very same folks doing the very same thing when it came to cooling (all the while totally blaming man, of course). Stephen Schneider from Stanford, for example, I quote, "Although the addition of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases surface temperature, the rate of temperature increases diminishes with increases in the atmospheric CO2.......However, it is projected that man's potential to pollute will increase 6
to 8-fold in the next 50 years. If this increased rate of injection...
should raise the present background opacity by a factor of 4, our
calculations suggest a decrease in global temperature by as much as 3.5 °C.
Such a large decrease in the average temperature of Earth, sustained
over a period of few years, is believed to be sufficient to trigger an
ice age." Specifically here the dude blamed aerosols. Oops............3) And I just love it, folks. Not only does this dude acknowledge (in this 1970s treatise) the logarithmic nature between CO2 emissions and warming, HE CHAMPIONS IT!! None of this bullshit about a positive feedback loop or amplification. Nope, the planet is going to cool DRAMATICALLY and there ain't a blessed thing that increases in CO2 can do about it, period/end of discussion.....I mean, is this unbelievable or what?

That little degenerate stooge wouldn't last an hour on the street. Hell, I wouldn't even mind taking a crack at him (my 31 inch Roberto Clemente bat from the '70s more than likely my weapon of choice) myself (first respectfully waiting in line of course).

Sunday, April 21, 2013

"Changes made after acceptance by the working group or the panel shall be those necessary to ensure consistency with the Summary for Policy Makers or the Overview chapter."......So, in other words, ixnay on any possible dissent and/or information which potentially contradicts their preordained conclusions. Eric Hoffer's, "The True Believer", anybody?

Bjorn Lomborg is one of those guys who's been on multiple sides of the global warming debate. First he was a skeptic. Then he was a believer. Now he calls himself a realist (that's exactly where I am, too)..........................................................................................Yes, there's been some warming. Yes, there's been a 60% increase in atmospheric CO2 that man has probably contributed to. Yes, CO2 will generally cause SOME warming (approximately 1 degree Celsius for every doubling of it - all things being equal). And, yes, some populations could potentially be hurt by it (this, while others will be aided - CO2 increases have long been associated with superior crop yields and warming is historically far less harmful than cooling).......................................................................................But this is where Bjorn and I say, "enough". a) The warming (3/4 of a degree Celsius) has hardly been extreme or unusual. b) There are other possible explanations for at least some of the rise in CO2 (again, I'm conceding that man has more than likely played a role); underwater volcanoes, bacteria, C14 isotopes from cosmic rays mixing with oxygen, etc.. c) The geological record is replete with periods in which CO2 levels were significantly higher than those of today (15-25 times higher according to Nir Shaviv and Ian Plimer) and, while we obviously can't decipher what a scenario such as that would do to human life, life in general and the planet obviously survived it. d) The largest chunk of 20th Century warming took place PRIOR to 1940 - this, while 80% of the CO2 emissions happened AFTER 1940 (1940 to 1975 being a period of no global warming). e) Most of the so-called solutions are either idiotic or utterly cost-ineffective......................................................................................So, what in fact SHOULD we be doing? The obvious strategy for me would be to let the free market figure it out (as oil becomes more expensive, we will either switch to alternative energy sources such as natural gas, nuclear, and solar or become radically more efficient as we obviously adapt as necessary). And, please, folks, if we have to spend more money, can we at the very least do it intelligently? Like, I don't know, maybe ridding the planet of malaria or something.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

"Al Gore and U.N. climate boss, Yvo de Boer, tell us that the world needs to go on an energy diet. Well, I have news for them. Africans are already on an energy diet. We're starving."......Fiona Kobusingye, Ugandan activist/Congress of Racial Equality.

According to Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute (yes, the dude's an actual climatologist), the Kyoto Protocol would end up costing the tax-payers of the signatory countries hundreds of billions, possibly trillions, of dollars, and it would only reduce the earth's temperature at a rate of 7 one hundredths of 1 degree Celsius per every 50 years. I have to ask you here. Does that sound even remotely like a good bargain to you? I'm pretty much thinking nada.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

One of those "independent researchers" who supposedly replicated the Michael Mann hockey stick is a fellow by the name of Shaun Marcott. Yeah, well guess what, people, he's a frigging liar as well. The dude was busted by Stephen McIntyre and this time the offense was changing the dates on the data. Mr. Marcott of course tried to double-down and move the goal posts but he ultimately had to fess up and uttered this little ditty in an E-mail to McIntyre himself - “The 20th-century portion of our
paleotemperature stack is not statistically robust, cannot be considered
representative of global temperature changes, and therefore is not the
basis of any of our conclusions.” So, in other words, the most recent part of the data – the very part in which Marcott, etc. had claimed was proof positive of a dramatic warming was and is garbaaage. Gee, what a huge surprise - NOT!

"Evidence already cited at various places in this volume suggests
that, for a few centuries in the Middle Ages, the climate in most parts
of the world regained something approaching the warmth of the warmest
postglacial times.

The northern limit of vineyards with a long history of
cultivation lay some 300-500 km north of the limit of commercial
vineyards in the 20thC.

In many parts of England there are traces of medieval tillage
far above anything attempted in the present century, even in wartime: up
to 350 m above sea level on Dartmoor and 320 m in Northumberland.

The tree line and upper limits of various crops on the hills of Central Europe were higher than today.

Mining operations at high levels in the Alps which had long been
abandoned were reopened, and water supply ducts were built to take
water from points which were subsequently overrun by glaciers and are in
some cases still under ice.

In Central Norway the area of farming spread 100-200m up valleys
and hillsides from 800 – 1000 AD, only to retreat just as decisively
after 1300 AD.

The Viking colonies in W and SW Greenland were able to bury their dead sheep in soil that has since been permanently frozen.

It was also a warm period generally from N Mexico to N Canada,
where forest remnants between 25 and 100 km north of the present limit
have been found, radio carbon dated between 880 and 1140 AD.

Holloway (1954) has reported evidence from the forest
composition of a warmer climate in South Island, New Zealand, between
about 700 AD and 1400 AD, than in the centuries before and after.

On the coast of East Antarctica, at Cape Hallett, a great modern
penguin rookery seems, from radiocarbon dating tests, to have been
first colonised between about 400 and 700 AD, presumably during a phase
of improving climate, and to have been occupied ever since."....................And how did Michael Mann in 1999 synopsize this article? Like this the fellow did - "Hubert Lamb in 1965, examining mostly evidence from Western Europe, never suggested that the Medieval Warm Period was a global phenomenon." Gee, I wonder what "most parts of the world" Michael Mann doesn't understand.

Monday, April 15, 2013

1939......Hm, it seems that 5 of those of those years just happen to fall prior to 1940, the explosion of CO2 emissions, etc.. How in the hell is this possible, you ask? James Hansen, that's how. Apparently the dude was cooking the books prior to 2007 and it wasn't until Mr. McIntyre's investigation that he was busted on the thing. Gee, I wonder what else they've been lying to us about.

"I've just completed Mike's nature
trick of adding in the real temps to end series for the past 20 years
(i.e., from 1981 onward) and from 1961 for Keith to hide the decline."......Phil Jones, University of East Anglia.......TO HIDE THE DECLINE! Please, somebody explain to me how this is somehow benign. These folks were using some sort of a gimmick to hide the fact that the bristlecone pine tree-rings were not, NOT, reflecting the actual temperatures and that they therefore could not have been even remotely accurate going back multiple centuries. This is abject dishonesty, folks, pure and simple, and the fact that there are seemingly people out there who want to mitigate it is disappointing and a sad, sorrowful state of the science.

Friday, April 12, 2013

As a person who doesn't necessarily fit well into either camp, and who strongly feels that a
homogeneity of thinking is dangerous, I would much prefer that both
sides remain relevant and relatively sane (yeah, I'm talking to you, Bachmann and Wasserman-Schultz) moving onward. For the sake of the country, I'm saying.

Illinois Senator, Dick Durbin - for his tireless work on deficit reduction (Simpson-Bowles, the Gang of Six) and immigration reform (the Gang of Eight). I like him and I'd probably even vote for the dude.

One fiscally conservative, secular, socially tolerant politician who doesn't want to police the planet (yes, I would obviously prefer more than one but just to get the damned ball rolling, I'm saying). References required.

1) According to climatologist, John Christy, the new cap and trade proposal in California will cost that state tens of billions of dollars and the effects will be minimal; a reduction in global temperature of about .02 of a degree Celsius and a reduction in atmospheric CO2 from 413 ppm to 412.9 ppm....To say that those people out there are nuts is an understatement.............2) I really wish that these politicians, whether they be President Obama or former speaker Gingrich, would simply knock it off with all of this, "We created X and X millions of new jobs" bullshit. The frigging morons didn't create squat. Investors, risk takers, visionaries, inventors, and of course the public that supports them - they're the ones who created the jobs. I'm telling you hear, folks, this exaggerated sense of self-importance of these damned Washingtonians is breathtaking of late.............3) According to a study cited by CNN's Erin Burnett (a person who I consider pretty nonpartisan), the federal government could raise more revenue by increasing taxes on the middle-class by 8% than it could by raising taxes on the wealthy by 100% (doubling them, in essence). She's actually cited this study on several occasions and the responses from the left have been utterly predictable; obfuscation and a rapid-fire changing of the topic. It just doesn't fit their narrative, folks; namely, that we can somehow fix the economic climate of the country simply by having one solitary segment of it fitting the bill....Not that it isn't entertaining to watch them wiggle, obviously.

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Back in 2010, George Mason University did a survey in which they questioned nearly 1,400 meteorologists from the American Meteorology Society and the National Weather Association. They asked them if they thought that the increasing warming of the past 150 years was "mostly caused by natural events" or "mostly caused by human activities". The results of the survey were quite surprising and more than a little "inconvenient". 63% of the respondents said that they thought that natural factors were the primary cause and only 31% claimed that that human activity was. Consensus conshmensus, apparently........................................................................................PS. A subsequent survey from the American Meteorology Society itself substantiated the findings and were actually even more devastating; this study finding that only 24% of the meteorologists polled agreed with the claim that human activity is the primary cause of global warming. 24% and dropping, methinks.

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

a) He used as a temperature proxy (bristlecone pine tree rings) something that literally any paleoclimatologist could have informed him was a thoroughly unreliable one and he even cherry-picked here.............b) He hid data that was inconvenient to his hypothesis (the bristlecone pine tree ring data actually started showing a temperature DECLINE in the '90s).............c) He refused to release his data and calculation methods to the public and it was only after a legal tug of war that he ultimately did so (in dribs and drabs).............d) He utilized a flawed statistical technique/computer program which (according to Economist, Ross McKitrick), even if he had inserted random numbers into it, still would have given him a hockey-stick shape.............d) He only utilized one type of temperature proxy (the already mentioned bristlecone pine tree rings), ignoring others such as ice cores, lake sediments, fossil pollen, captains logs, etc..............e) He has viciously and personally attacked (even going as far as to sue the guy who did the uproariously funny Youtube spoof of him) anybody who has ever criticized him.

The IPCC's theory of anthropogenic global warming hinges on one key element; a positive feedback loop. The essence of it is that even a small increase in atmospheric CO2 will interact with the preexisting water vapor and clouds and cause an amplification of the normal one degree increase per doubling of CO2 by a factor of anywhere from 2-5 (the theory is based upon the plausible notion that increases in CO2 will cause the ocean water to evaporate and create an even more powerful greenhouse effect). It was a "putting your all your eggs in one basket" approach to climatology that eventually prompted the now infamous computer models of the '90s.........................................................................................So, how well has the data from the past twenty or so years supported this theory of anthropogenic global warming via a CO2-water vapor positive feedback loop? "Not very" would be putting it quite mildly. The fact of the matter here is that global temperatures (as determined by satellites) over the past 16 years are actually down from the 1997-1998 peak of El Nino (itself a naturally occurring climate phenomena) and the trajectory doesn't appear to be changing. This, despite the fact that global CO2 emissions have continued to rise and rise markedly................................................................................................Oh, and if that isn't sufficient enough proof for you folks that the feedback isn't a positive one but a negative one, these satellites have also been measuring the amount of radiation that's been escaping back into space, and GUESS WHAT? The amount of radiation that's been escaping hasn't been decreasing. It's been INCREASING. It seems, folks, that when you evaporate more water, you aren't just increasing the greenhouse effect. You're also increasing cloud cover and what does cloud cover do? Yeah, that's right, it blocks the sun from hitting the land/lower atmosphere and the temperatures moderate accordingly....Wow. I guess that it's back to the drawing board YET AGAIN.

1) "Because of natural variability, it is impossible to pinpoint what 2100 would look like. The climate sensitivity to greenhouse warming is still pretty uncertain, and it is not clear whether or to what extent man-made factors will dominate the climate of this period. It IS clear that the computer models used to predict future warming were deeply flawed."...Judith Curry, Georgia Tech University climatologist.............2) "Half of Florida and San Francisco will be under water by the end of the century (obviously I'm paraphrasing)."...Albert Gore, he needs no introduction.............So, which of these two individuals has more adroitly thought the matter through? Anybody?

Wow. It would probably have to be the time when he made that boneheaded comment about the young kidnapped boy enjoying his captivity, a situation in which we later found out that the youngster was actually being butt-fucked repeatedly by the perpetrator. Yeah, I'd probably have to go with that one.

Friday, April 5, 2013

James Hansen and the rest of those 1990s IPCC climate modelers are the Dick Cheneys of environmentalism. Just like Cheney got virtually everything wrong when it came to the Iraq conflict (that we would be greeted as liberators, that the war would be completely paid off with oil money, etc.), Hansen and his crew have been fully discredited when it comes to predictions of global warming.........................................................................................a) They predicted far more atmospheric warming than has actually happened (air temperature has actually decreased from the El Nino highs of 1997).......b) They predicted far more oceanic warming than has actually happened (the Argo system has shown a steady ocean temperature since 2003 and any measurements prior to the Argo system are essentially worthless).......c) They predicted that the planet's sea levels would rise somewhere between 26-59 centimeters by 2100, with Al Gore going even farther than that at 20 feet (the Envisat Satellite which has been measuring sea levels since 2004 has sea levels rising at less than 4 centimeters per century).......d) They predicted a particular atmospheric warming in the tropics at about 10 kilometers up and that has fizzled, too (weather balloons have been measuring atmospheric temperatures since the 1960s and no hot spots have ever been uncovered).......e) They predicted that less and less heat would be radiated into space and the absolute opposite has occurred (ERBE instruments have been measuring outgoing radiation from satellites since the1980s).......f) They predicted a positive feedback loop between CO2 and water vapor of anywhere between 2 and 5 (so, instead of getting a 1 degree increase in warming for every doubling of CO2, you get a 2-5 degree increase - something that the geophysical evidence has never once put forth) and on that one they were WAY OFF (the actual feedback as measured by the outgoing radiation, surface temperatures, and CO2 levels has actually been negative; .5 - .6).......g) They predicted a massive reduction in global sea ice and that hasn't happened, either (sea ice as measured by the University of Illinois's Arctic Climate Research Center shows but a miniscule reduction).......................................................................................I think that we just have to face it here, folks. Virtually any other theory with a similar track record would have crashed and burned easily by now. BUT, because there now exist entire government agencies and entire university departments which cannot continue without it, AGW prevails...........................................................................................P.S. And, just for the record, I am not a "denier". I fully recognize that there was global warming from 1850 to 2000 and I am even willing to entertain the notion that human activity contributed to it. My only contention here is that our contribution has significantly been inflated and that these alarmist predictions by Al Gore and other folks are total bullshit. A 20 foot rise in seal levels by 2100. LOL!!

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

So, have you gotten a load (and, yes, I've selected that term very carefully) of MSNBC's latest rating's disaster/train-wreck; a little something called the, "The Cycle"? Yeah? Well, then you've probably noticed that it's quite frankly little more than a rip-off of Fox News', "The Five". Only instead of having just one liberal (i.e., Bob Beckel) being ganged up on by a bevy of fire-breathing knuckle-dragging conservatives, this show flips it and you only have one conservative (S.E. Cupp) and a bevy of fire-breathing knuckle-dragging liberals (the absolutely despicable Toure' obviously being the worst of them). I mean, I know that these program directors are are morons and totally lack originality and all but, come on, are we so removed from the days of Mike Wallace and Tim Russert that THIS is all that's left? I sure a hell hope not.

Monday, April 1, 2013

The archaeological, geological, and historical evidence is OVERWHELMING that the second Holocene warming optimum of 6-8,000 years ago was not just warmer than today but significantly so. Amongst the more compelling pieces of evidence to support this include rock paintings (many of which show that the Sahara, for instance, was actually wet enough to support numerous herds of animals), lake and soil sediments, archaeological sites in Egypt and the Sudan, peat, stalactites, and even fossil pollen. The fact that we have still have pseudo scientific lunatics like Michael Mann trying to undo the work of real scientists is exceedingly troubling, I think........................................................................................Oh, and, just for the record here, the second Holocene warming optimum was a time period in which human beings thrived. Populations grew. Lifespans lengthened. Food became plentiful. Diseases were largely kept at bay. And trade literally flourished. It wasn't until the Akkadian cooling which started about 3600 BC that things really started to deteriorate.

a) Former Governor of Arkansas. b) Fox News ratings king. c) Bible-thumping moron who doesn't believe in evolution and who apparently still thinks that the planet is 6,000 years old. d) All of the above.